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The Content of The 
Advanced Religion 
Course 



JOHN M. COOPER, D.D. 

CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA 




THE CATHOLIC EDUCATION PRESS 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 


1924 


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imprimatur: 


EDWARD A. PACE, D.D. 

Censor Deputatus 


* MICHAEL J. CURLEY, D.D. 

Archbishop of Baltimore 


Copyright, 1924 
John M. Cooper 


JAN 15 IB24 



NATIONAL CAPITAL PRESS, INC., WASHINGTON, D. C. 


©CU705723 
Vv<0 | 


PREFACE 


The five chapters which make up the present volume 
were published originally in the Catholic Educational 
Review in 1923. The writer desires to express to the 
Editors of The Review his grateful acknowledgment of 
their courtesy in permitting the reprint in book form 


3 



CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I. The Moral Content. 5 

II. The Dogmatic Content. 22 

III. The Historical Content. 34 

IV. The Apologetic Content . 44 

V. The Ascetic Content. 52 








THE MORAL CONTENT 

“Do you know of any satisfactory textbook for high 
school and college classes in religion ?” For many years 
the writer has plied with this question his friends and 
confreres engaged in the field. He has yet to receive 
in reply an unqualified affirmative. 

Our current textbooks have excellences as manifest as 
they are manifold. Witness, for instance, their limpid 
clearness, their orderly arrangement, their unhesitating 
directness. He who runs may read, and reading may 
know without fail whereon the Catholic Church takes 
its changeless stand. Our textbooks have done and are 
doing yeoman service. Where, however, there is ques¬ 
tion of the divinely revealed pearl of great price, we the 
jewelers who are charged to design its setting should be 
untrue to our God-given trust were we ever to rest 
quite satisfied with our clumsy human handicraft. 

This chapter and the ones to follow deal with the 
moral, dogmatic, historical, apologetic, and ascetic con¬ 
tent of the advanced religion course. They barely touch 
upon methods. Nor are they a systematic treatment 
even of content. They embody some scattered sugges¬ 
tions regarding certain minor modifications in our texts 
that seem desirable. These suggestions are the out¬ 
growth of numerous informal conferences with other 
teachers working actively in the field and of the writer’s 
personal experience and experimentation during thirteen 
years with college classes in religion and the same num¬ 
ber of years with high school religion classes. The 
present chapter deals with the moral or ethical content 
of the advanced religion course. 


5 


6 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

The moral sections of the handbooks of advanced 
religion in more common use closely resemble the 
technical manuals of moral theology used as textbooks 
in our ecclesiastical seminaries. No one familiar with 
both the handbooks and the manuals can fail to be 
struck by the obvious similarity between the two in 
viewpoint, order, spirit, terminology, and general man¬ 
ner of presentation. The handbooks are shorter and 
more compact and omit many details treated fully in 
the manuals, but in the main the former are modeled 
faithfully upon the latter and are taken almost verbally 
out of them. The handbooks are boiled-down technical 
theology. They are reduced and slightly retouched 
photos, or, shall we say, vest-pocket editions, of the 
manuals. They are the technical manuals looked at 
through the wrong end of a telescope. 

Now, the manuals of moral theology have grown out 
of a very specific practical need. Unlike our devotional 
and ascetic literature, such as, for example, the “Imita¬ 
tion of Christ,” they have not been written for the di¬ 
rect moral education or personal edification of the 
reader, be he priest, seminarian, or layman. They have, 
as Lehmkuhl expresses it, “the eminently practical scope 
of instructing and forming spiritual directors and con¬ 
fessors.” Their history, no less than their form and 
content, is unmistakable evidence that this sharply de¬ 
limited practical aim has gardened and Burbanked their 
growth. They discuss objectively the field of Christian 
rights and duties and point out such moral pedagogical 
technique as may be applied to the individual penitent 
or spiritual consulter. Historically they trace their 
ancestry, in one line at least, to the medieval penitential 
books. Taken by and large, the technical manuals, when 


The Moral Content 


7 


studied in conjunction with pastoral and ascetic the¬ 
ology, admirably fulfil their mission of equipping con¬ 
fessors and spiritual advisers. 

Is, however, this mission the aim of our advanced 
moral education? Ninety-five to ninety-nine per cent 
of the student body in Catholic high schools and col¬ 
leges for boys and one hundred per cent in those for 
girls will never become confessors or sacerdotal spirit¬ 
ual advisers. They will live their span of life as lay¬ 
men and lay women in the world. Obviously our 
moral education and moral textbooks should aim at 
equipping them, not for hearing confessions, but for 
living in the world. 

To be more precise, our primary aim in Catholic 
moral education should be to turn out, not merely grad¬ 
uates who are well-instructed in the Catholic moral 
ideal, but graduates who are living the Catholic ideal in 
their daily lives. Instruction about that ideal is a part 
but a part only of moral education. From the instruc¬ 
tional standpoint, we must aim at developing in our stu¬ 
dents the habit of informed, intelligent and loyal moral 
judgment as a means of helping them to apply the Cath¬ 
olic standard to their conduct in life, first of all here and 
now during their school days, and secondly by anticipa¬ 
tion to the concrete problems and situations of after¬ 
life. From the volitional standpoint, we must aim at 
getting our students to live out their Catholic ideal of 
conduct, first of all here and now while at school, and 
secondly to develop in their lives those habits and per¬ 
sonal standards that will carry over into the broader 
arena and newer situations of adulthood. The forego¬ 
ing aim is shared in common by both elementary and 
advanced moral education. So far as the latter is con- 


8 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

cerned, should we not expect from the privileged mi¬ 
nority who pass through our Catholic high schools and 
colleges, the minority whose lives will be scrutinized by 
friend and foe more searchingly and under a whiter 
light, the minority to whom will fall" greater share 
of leadership—should we not expect from them a higher 
standard of moral judgment and of moral living than 
from the majority who have lacked the privilege of 
higher Catholic education? 

As is apparent, therefore, the specific aims of moral 
theology and of advanced moral education differ radi¬ 
cally. While, of course, the respective textbooks must 
contain the same fundamental Catholic truths and prin¬ 
ciples, we should naturally expect, in view of this pri¬ 
mary difference of aim, great differences both in con¬ 
tent and in manner of presentation and development 
thereof. 

1. Moral theology lays particular, albeit of course 
not exclusive, emphasis on sins. It goes to great pains 
to enumerate, define, classify, and sub-divide them, as 
well as to weigh their respective gravity. The reason 
is obvious enough. When we go to confession, we go, 
not to trumpet forth our virtues, but to confess our 
shortcomings. If then the priestly physician of the soul 
would cure his patients, he must specialize in the diag¬ 
nosis and treatment of the soul’s diseases. 

The moral theologian, writing for the needs of the 
confessor, will therefore distinguish, for instance, and 
define scientifically the several kinds of blasphemy: di¬ 
rect and indirect, mediate and immediate, heretical, im¬ 
precatory, and contumelious. A sacerdotal physician of 
souls may on a rare occasion—once in five or ten years 
perhaps, if that often—have need to know these distinc- 


The Moral Content 


9 


tions or at least to know that these distinctions exist. 
But should we require a knowledge of such distinctions 
and definitions from immature adolescents? 

Again, to give another illustration, manuals of moral 
theology ofte ■ eat the eighth commandment by tabu¬ 
lating, defining and discussing the following ways in 
which it may be violated: by.perjury, by lying, by 
detraction, by contumely, and by rash judgment. Be¬ 
sides distinguishing between rash judgment and rash 
suspicion, they divide lying into malicious, officious, and 
jocose; contumely or insult into positive and negative; 
and detraction into simple and calumniatory, direct and 
indirect. How many of these distinctions do you your¬ 
self know and how many could you define offhand? 
What, for instance, is the difference between a positive 
and a negative insult, or between direct and indirect 
detraction? How many of the above distinctions need 
the conscientious and educated Catholic layman know? 

For the sake of clearness, certain sins and their kinds 
may and must be treated in an advanced religion course. 
But, in view of the primary aim of religion handbooks 
as distinguished from the aim of manuals of moral the¬ 
ology, is it necessary to tabulate, define, and subdivide 
in the pages of the former all the fifty-seven varieties 
of sins under each chapter heading or under each com¬ 
mandment? 

Moreover, is it good pedagogy to lay the major stress 
on sins? Should not the virtues, presented in all their 
rainbow loveliness, be focal? Have not the latter a 
stronger dynamic appeal? With apologies to the cohorts 
who gallantly maintain the Allmacht of instinct-drives, 
may we not still believe that there is a certain ideo¬ 
motor trend in all of us that makes the repeated harp- 


10 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

ing on the darker side of moral life a suggestion and 
occasion of sin in itself? Then too, does not such a ques¬ 
tion as “How may we break the Fourth Command¬ 
ment ?” constitute something akin to a subtle challenge 
to the red streak of self-assertiveness—some would call 
it bolshevism or just cussedness—that normally com¬ 
panions middle adolescence? 

Instead of giving gratuitous advertising to the numer¬ 
ous brands of Satan’s products, would it not be better to 
use the pages of our moral textbooks as advertising space 
for the lofty and soul-stirring positive moral ideals of 
Our Divine Exemplar? Instead of dividing and sub¬ 
dividing blasphemy, would it not be better to present to 
our students the divine witchery of reverence and loyalty 
to God Our Father? Instead of focussing attention on 
our all too manifold opportunities of breaking the eighth 
commandment, would it not be better to stress and stim¬ 
ulate thereunder truthfulness and the sense of honor, 
trustworthiness and honesty, kindness and fair play in 
thought and word, consideration for others’ feelings and 
leniency in interpreting others’ acts and motives? Shall 
our instruction in moral hygiene and health be confined 
to the microscopic examination of nocuous moral bacilli? 

Shall not, in a word, the Catholic moral pedagogical 
principle be: Select for textbook and class treatment 
the great leading virtues under each heading or com¬ 
mandment ; neglect the minutiae; concentrate by instruc¬ 
tion and every pedagogical device upon building up in 
the lives of our adolescent charges the key habits that 
combine to make the ideal practical Catholic layman and 
laywoman. What was Our Lord’s method and principle, 
even in dealing as He was with adults, and not with 
adolescents? 


The Moral Content 


11 


2. A confessor is both physician of souls and judge of 
consciences. The confessional is both a sickroom and a 
tribunal. As judge, the confessor must temper justice 
with mercy, he must give the penitent the benefit of a 
doubt, and he may strictly demand only the moral min¬ 
imum. As physician, his treatment is curative and he 
must often be content with half a cure in lieu of com¬ 
plete restoration of his penitent’s health of soul. Moral 
theology therefore tends to stress the curative more than 
the preventive and constructive phases of moral educa¬ 
tion, and devotes a good many of its pages to the deter¬ 
mination of the moral minimum of strict obligation, 
leaving often to other theological sciences and disciplines 
the task of hortatory insistence on the moral maximum. 

Charity as distinguished from justice lends itself less 
readily to strict juristic treatment. It looms large in 
our Catholic hortatory literature, but is given very brief 
discussion in our technical moral theologies. That our 
religion handbooks modeled on technical moral manuals 
treat so cavalierly the field of charity and the works of 
mercy is perhaps due to this cause. Charity and the 
works of mercy have all but disappeared from our ele¬ 
mentary and advanced religion textbooks. Yet charity 
as ordinarily distinguished from justice constitutes prob¬ 
ably a full fifty per cent of the Christian moral code. 
Our Saviour makes its practice or omission the final test 
of our classification at the Last Judgment among the 
sheep or the goats. Open the gospel at any page at 
random, and in four cases out of five your eye will alight 
on a passage describing charity and the works of mercy 
being practiced or enjoined by Our Divine Exemplar and 
Teacher. 

As justice and the last seven commandments cover the 


12 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

sphere of our neighbor’s rights, so charity and the works 
of mercy cover the sphere of our neighbor’s needs. His 
rights concern his welfare little if at all more deeply than 
do his needs. 

Would it not therefore be in better accordance with 
Our Lord’s example and teaching as well as with the 
cardinal emphasis in Catholic morality on love of neigh¬ 
bor, to devote as much or nearly as much space in our 
handbooks of advanced religion to the treatment of char¬ 
ity and the works of mercy as we devote to the treatment 
of justice and the last seven commandments? 

First of all, should we not stress the opportunities of 
charity in daily life, and stress them as opportunities as 
well as obligations. Theoretically and juristically, char¬ 
ity is certainly obligatory—although the writer has more 
than once verified among groups of otherwise intelligent 
and well instructed advanced students the ingrown un¬ 
catholic concept that charity and the works of mercy are 
optional for the individual lay Catholic or that they are 
works of supererogation or merely means of accumulat¬ 
ing merit or of satisfying for the temporal punishment 
due to sin. Stressing them solely as strict obligations 
may sometimes defeat our purpose. Charity obliges un¬ 
der limitations, viz., in proportion to our neighbor’s need 
and to our ability to help out. In fact, pinning down 
the obligation of charity on John Smith in this or that 
concrete situation and circumstance is in practice a slip¬ 
pery task. Ten chances to one, if John is reluctant and 
has a normal IQ and fair nimbleness of wit, he can find 
half a dozen perfectly good loopholes through which he 
can escape from the bondage of strict moral obligation. 
In educating our students in charity, would it not then 
be best, while definitely making clear its obligatoriness, 
to present it less under its juristic aspects? 


The Moral Content 


13 


Furthermore, we need to expand very much many cur¬ 
rent conceptions of charity and the works of mercy. In 
the typical Catholic centuries, the Middle Ages, the 
Church interpreted the works of mercy very inclusively 
and granted indulgences, not only for aid and resources 
given to the building of churches, hospitals, charitable 
institutions, and schools, but also for works promoting 
wider public welfare such as building roads and bridges, 
dams and harbors, such as active membership in trade 
guilds and marksmen’s clubs—the medieval prototypes 
respectively of our modern labor unions and national 
militia—and such as founding non-usurious money-loan- 
our modern degenerated pawnshop. Read the details in 
that delightful little work of Nikolaus Paulus recently 
translated by Father Elliot Ross, “Indulgences as a 
Social Factor in the Middle Ages.” 

Interpreted thus in the traditional inclusive Catholic 
sense, “visiting the sick,” for instance, to-day includes a 
host of activities ranging from a simple visit to a sick 
friend to the bacteriological researches of a Pasteur, from 
the conduct of a hospital to the life-saving task of pro¬ 
viding a typhoid-ridden city with a pure water and milk 
supply. If we interpret charity in its historic Catholic 
sense, we shall find it expanding over enormous fields of 
activity that we are accustomed to ticket as vocational, 
educational, sanitary, industrial, social, or civic, and 
therefore merely secular. Interpret charity to the Cath¬ 
olic student as our holy mother the Church has his¬ 
torically interpreted it, and our religion becomes more 
and more what it was intended to be, a seven-day-a- 
week and twenty-four-hour-a-day affair. Nothing that 
concerns human needs and welfare is foreign to its pur- 


14 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

pose, provided only that God be not left out of our 
reckoning and that what we do be done “in His name/’ 

Charity has a still more intimate and personal aspect. 
Charity being synonymous with generosity, kindliness, 
helpfulness, and the spirit of the good turn and the help¬ 
ing hand, the everyday life of the layman or laywoman 
in the world bristles with opportunities, not sporadic but 
daily and hourly, for the exercise of charity. Humdrum 
work-a-day life at play and at work, at home and 
abroad, in the office, the store, and the factory, becomes 
a tissue woven of countless opportunities for generously 
and charitably sharing with others what we may have 
in abundance, be it abundance of this world’s goods or 
be it abundance of leisure, skill, intelligence, experience, 
good sense, good humor, or God’s grace. Would it not 
be well to find place in our advanced religion textbooks 
for calling the attention of our students to the wood in 
the trees, to the opportunities that fairly jump at them 
in their daily activities and contacts as playfellows, 
workfellows, friends, and home members, and as future 
parents, workers, and citizens? 

Charity finally should be treated in its vocational 
aspects. Practically all honest labor fulfills some human 
need. Some professions do so more obviously. Such are 
the medical and nursing professions with their aim of 
“visiting the sick,” that is of curing or preventing illness, 
and of staying the hand of death. Such is again the 
legal profession with its function of maintaining justice 
between man and man. And so one could run through 
the professions and vocations, scamping not even the 
humbler tasks of the hewer of wood and the drawer of 
water. All after their respective kinds and manners do 
neighborly service as their life-task. Of course a vicious 


The Moral Content 


15 


and selfish intention can dethrone from the plane of 
charity any vocation, but so too can a vicious and selfish 
intention dethrone from the plane of charity even the 
most literal and manifest work of mercy. The very cup 
of cold water given is not a work of mercy unless done 
unselfishly, in the spirit of charity, “in His name.” 

In the foregoing paragraphs we have not been spin¬ 
ning gossamer theories or speaking by the book. The 
writer’s colleagues and he have tried the plan experi¬ 
mentally and can vouch that it “gets across.” 

3. Moral theology manuals devote the major part of 
their attention to the objective scientific determination 
of the Christian norms of conduct. The manuals shed 
light, and an abundance of it. They do not radiate heat. 
Their treatment of Catholic morality is mainly a cold 
intellectualistic one. They are not written for the pur¬ 
pose of stirring into action those forces within the stu¬ 
dent or reader that inspire him to live up to these norms. 
This latter task is committed by the moral theologian 
into the hands of his co-workers, the devotional and 
ascetic writers and preachers. A perusal of the moral 
manuals and of the handbooks modeled upon them 
makes evident at first blush the contrast they offer with, 
say, the Sermon on the Mount, or with the average mis¬ 
sion sermon or Sunday morning sermon on a moral topic, 
or with the “Imitation of Christ.” 

If our aim in moral education is to get our students 
to live the Catholic ideal as well as to know it, should 
our moral instruction be coldly didactic and intel¬ 
lectualistic? Should it not also be an appeal to the 
heart, to the affective and volitional forces, the dynamic 
driving forces that mould youth and age? Why need 
we be in a perpetual fidget lest we be caught in the act 


s. 


16 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

of “preaching” to our students? Is there no via media 
between “preachiness” and aloof didacticism? 

It will be said, of course, that our teachers do awaken 
and train the will in their elaboration of the text. Our 
qualified teachers do, but they do so either because they 
are so much closer to their boys and girls than have 
seemingly been the compilers of our textbooks in ad¬ 
vanced religion or because they are so much farther 
removed from the deflecting influence of the highly 
specialized moral theology manuals. But granted that 
our qualified teachers do, why should we handicap them 
as we are doing by textbooks of such arctic tempera¬ 
ture? And how can we expect our boys and girls to 
warm their hearts and hands over such icy pages? 

4. Theology is a broad field. Specialization has been 
found necessary. One result of this has been the separa¬ 
tion for purposes of intensive intellectual treatment of 
moral theology from dogmatic and sacramental theology. 
Our religion handbooks have followed suit, and no one 
would question the necessity therein for orderly exposi¬ 
tion. 

But, is it not poor moral pedagogy to define moral 
standards without at the same time reinforcing the 
motives—supernatural and natural, rational, instinctive, 
and emotional—that will help to get the moral standards 
realized in the actual lives of the students? Such 
motives are at hand in the flaming example of Christ 
and of the saints and in the great dogmas that are the 
mainspring of Catholic motivation. The means for 
buttressing the motives are at hand in prayer, devotions, 
and the sacramental system. Is it good pedagogy to 
treat all of moral instruction one year or one semester, 
and then wait until next year or next semester before 


The Moral Content 


17 


stimulating the motive forces and suggesting the super¬ 
natural means for getting the moral ideal reduced to 
concrete practice? Does not our teaching then run the 
risk of being instruction about the Catholic moral ideal 
instead of education in it? 

Orderly treatment is necessary. We make no plea 
for chaos. But would it not be well quietly and, so to 
speak, marginally to interweave into every section of 
our moral instruction and our moral texts, suggestions 
of the inspiring example of Christ and the saints, cross- 
references as it were to the pertinent motivating dogmas, 
practical hints of the help to be obtained through prayer 
and the sacraments? Is not this what we do in our 
moral sermons, except perhaps in some of those courses 
of moral sermon-instructions which have recently de¬ 
veloped out of our catechesis? 

5. Moral theology manuals are commonly written in 
Latin and usually have a more or less cosmopolitan out¬ 
look. The same manual may be used as a textbook in 
French, Italian, and American seminaries. The writers 
consequently have in mind more generally prevalent 
conditions. Local or national conditions to which our 
general moral principles and precepts must be applied 
are not taken so explicitly into account. 

If, however, our advanced religion handbooks are for 
the use of American boys and girls, should not special 
attention be devoted therein to contemporary American 
conditions, problems, and applications? When a course 
in American life and conditions and movements—call it 
community civics or whatever we please—gets genuine 
and full recognition in our high school and college cur¬ 
riculum, the trail of the instructor in higher religion 
classes will be appreciably less steep and thorny. If 


18 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

his students have not acquired a deeper and truer knowl¬ 
edge of the swirling currents around them than they can 
glean from the headlines and sporting sheets of the daily 
newspaper, the religion instructor must stop over and 
over again to explain to them many things of vital con¬ 
cern to Catholic morality that they should already have 
learned in an elementary course in the social sciences. 
Very intelligent college students, for instance, often stare 
in skeptic wonder when told that our American infant 
mortality and industrial accident rate is nearly twice 
what it should be and much higher than among many 
other civilized peoples to-day. Simple and relatively in¬ 
expensive preventive measures would cut down this rate 
from one-half to one-third. Is there not therefore a 
moral obligation to take these measures? 

Numberless similar conditions involving an unmistak¬ 
able individual and collective moral responsibility will 
readily occur to any one familiar with our American 
economic, industrial, social, civic, domestic, hygienic, 
recreational, and kindred conditions. Many of these 
conditions are treated in recent textbooks of social or 
community civics and are being studied exhaustively in 
numerous monographs and surveys that are easily acces¬ 
sible in our libraries. Might not the students in ad¬ 
vanced religion be given the task of making an 
investigation from published surveys, from inquiry 
among experts, and from personal observation, of some 
at least of the conditions in their own community? The 
writer is intimately acquainted with one such project 
carried out in a Catholic high school last year. 

At any rate, should not the adolescent citizens who 
sit at our feet in the religion classes of our high schools 
and colleges be trained to a sense of their collective 


The Moral Content 


19 


duties, and be trained to apply intelligently and con¬ 
scientiously to actual conditions at their own front doors 
the great Catholic moral principles and ideals? And 
should not our handbooks of advanced religion contain 
a great number of such specific moral applications? 

As embodying provisionally the suggestions tenta¬ 
tively and hesitatingly offered in the preceding pages, 
the following outline for the moral section of the ad¬ 
vanced religion course, an outline which his colleagues 
and he have tried out experimentally, is submitted for 
discussion, criticism, and correction: 

a. Love of God and neighbor as the essence of the 
Catholic ideal of conduct; the affective, volitional, and 
motor elements common to both natural and super¬ 
natural love. 

b. Love God, that is “Treat Him as your Father ,, j 
hence, be reverent and loyal to Him, worship Him, obey 
Him, observe Sundays, holy days, days of fast and 
abstinence. 

c. Love your neighbor, that is, “Do to him as you 
would have him do to you”; hence fulfil his needs and 
respect his rights. 

d. Our neighbor’s needs, charity and the works of 
mercy, “The strong shall help the weak,” or “Those who 
have shall share.” 

e. The works of mercy in detail; expand their concept 
in the historic traditional Catholic sense and as carried 
on under our contemporary American conditions; em¬ 
phasize their focal importance and obligatoriness in 
the Catholic ideal, and bring out not merely their social 
but also their personal and vocational aspects. (One- 
third or at least one-quarter of whole moral course to 
be devoted to works of mercy.) 

/. Our neighbor’s rights, justice, the last seven com¬ 
mandments, “To every man his rights.” 

g. The commandments in detail; explain them in their 
individual and collective interpretation as applied to 


20 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

contemporary American conditions and problems espe¬ 
cially ; emphasize how each commandment protects some 
human right and makes for human welfare—for domes¬ 
tic, economic, social, civic, or international well-being, 
and for health and the sacredness of human life. (One- 
third to one-half of moral course to be devoted to com¬ 
mandments.) 

h. General resume and deductions. 

The positive aspect of the moral law is emphasized 
throughout, as appears from the foregoing outline. For 
a more detailed example, see section 1 in the preceding 
pages. Interwoven into every section and sub-section, 
should appear the sublime figure of Christ in His words 
and examples, as well as frequent references to the 
motivating dogmas and to the devotional and sacra¬ 
mental means of obtaining God’s grace to live up to the 
moral ideal, and hints on the technique of habit-forma¬ 
tion. 

Certain leit motifs are recurrently suggested through¬ 
out the course and are brought to express consciousness 
in the final few lessons (section h). Such underlying 
ideas should include at least the following: 

a. Service is not something gummed on to morality; 
all moral living serves our neighbor’s welfare by fulfill¬ 
ing his needs or by protecting his rights. 

b. The divine moral law is not arbitrary; God loves 
us; hence, He desires the well-being of His children both 
here and hereafter; hence, his moral law, while impos¬ 
ing a burden upon us, is nonetheless a signal token of 
His concern for and interest in our welfare on this earth 
as well as in eternity. 

c. The moral law, while in a real sense limiting our 
freedom, in the long run makes for both our freedom and 
our welfare, by protecting my rights and freedom against 
infringement by my neighbor, and vice versa; it is a 
fifty-fifty plan, with no playing of favorites. 


The Moral Content 


21 


d. God created us with free will, unlike the sub¬ 
human creation; our loyalty to God’s interests and to 
our neighbor’s is a trusteeship. 

e. Our Father in Heaven neither crushes or spoils us; 
he trains us, he helps us, he entrusts us with responsi¬ 
bility; life is a divinely planned “project” in educating 
us, and thus in building up the three-fold aspect of the 
Kingdom of God,—in our hearts, in the world, and in the 
world to come. 


THE DOGMATIC CONTENT 


Dogmas, like the human mind, may be studied in their 
static and structural aspects or in their dynamic and 
functional aspects. We may have a functional theology 
as we have a functional psychology. We may ask what 
dogmas are, or we may ask what dogmas do. 

The advocates of creedless religion answer the latter 
question with a sweeping negative. Dogmas, they say, 
do nothing; they are fifth wheels, if not indeed drags. 
Live your life according to high moral standards, our 
emancipated brethren admonish us, and it does not mat¬ 
ter what you believe or whether you believe anything 
at all. 

As Catholics, we beg to differ. Moreover, our Cath¬ 
olic answer to the question, What do dogmas do?, has 
an intimate bearing upon the answer to the further 
question, What should be the dogmatic content of an 
advanced religion course? For if the aim of Catholic 
religious education is to get our students to live the 
Catholic ideal of love of God and neighbor, the deter¬ 
mination of what their dogmatic faith contributes to 
such moulding of their lives becomes a matter of pri¬ 
mary concern. 

Using, then, the words “dogma” and “dogmatic truth” 
to include both worship in the sense of grace, prayer, 
and the sacraments as well as dogma in its more re¬ 
stricted sense, let us inquire, What do dogmas do? 

Why has God revealed to us certain supernatural 
truths? Are such revealed truths simply divinely set 
tests of our intellectual humility? Are they anticipatory 
illuminations of the intellect lighting the way for the 


22 


The Dogmatic Content 


23 


fuller illumination that is to come when we shall see 
God face to face and no longer as in a glass darkly? 
Are they affectionate self-revelations from God, vouch¬ 
safed to us on the principle that we “reveal” ourselves 
to those whom we love? The discussion of these ques¬ 
tions would carry us far afield into speculative theology. 

We may instead simplify our educational task by con¬ 
fining our quest to the less ambitious and more tangible 
question: What do dogmas do in helping us to live our 
Catholic lives, in helping us towards the goal of being 
perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect? What, so to 
speak, is their religious educational function? On the 
answer to this question hinges the determination of 
the dogmatic content of religious educational instruc¬ 
tion. 

So far as dogmas relating to grace, prayer, and the 
sacraments are concerned, their function is quite obvious. 
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, and these 
dogmas tell us how to go about getting from the Author 
of all good things that tonic of the soul which we call 
grace, that assistance from on high which strengthens 
the spirit against the weakness of the flesh and helps us 
live up to our Catholic moral ideal. 

As regards dogmas understood in their more restricted 
sense, the answer does not lie so close to the surface. 
We shall therefore, in approaching the question, choose 
for analysis and study some concrete examples. 

“The world,” wrote Lecky, “is governed by its ideals, 
and seldom or never has there been one which has exer¬ 
cised a more profound and, on the whole, a more salutary 
influence than the mediaeval conception of the Blessed 
Virgin. ... No longer the slave or toy of man, no 
longer associated only with ideas of degradation and 


24 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

sensuality, woman rose, in the person the Virgin 
Mother, into a new sphere. . . This age-long his¬ 
torical and educational influence exercised upon the 
lives of countless Catholic multitudes by the ideal of the 
Virgin Mother of Christ has been exe Ised by reason 
of the accumulating dogmas that have built up and en¬ 
riched that ideal. These dogmas are those of Mary’s 
divine motherhood, of her Immaculate Conception, of 
her sinlessness, of her virgin maternity, of her perpetual 
virginity, and of her freedom from even the bodily cor¬ 
ruption of the grave. Her divine Son showered upon 
His Mother privilege upon privilege, purity upon purity, 
and out of the resulting wealth of dogmas, heaped, so 
to speak, one upon another, has grown the star-white 
and radiant ideal of Mary’s virginal chastity and ma¬ 
ternal loveliness. By what process has this ideal become 
the dynamic uplifting force that it has been? 

Do you think that the average lay Catholic can define 
clearly each of these various doctrines and dogmas con¬ 
cerning the Blessed Virgin? In 1918, and again in 1920, 
the writer’s colleagues and he gave a surprise test of 
elementary catechism questions to unselected groups of 
Catholic college students, 436 students in all. These 
groups would probably represent a fair cross-section of 
the general Catholic population. Among the questions 
was, What is the Immaculate Conception? Of the 436 
students, 264 or 60.5 per cent answered correctly, 19 or 
4.3 per cent hazily, and 153 or 35.1 per cent quite incor¬ 
rectly. Yet all these students had, as has the average 
Catholic, a very clear vision and impression of the 
radiant purity of Mary, a vision and impression that 
serves in their lives as an inspiring and dynamic ideal. 
The energizing ideal remains as an abiding after-image 


The Dogmatic Content 


25 


or after-imj ssion, even though the perhaps once known 
and memorized definitions of the various Marian dog¬ 
mas have suffered more than a sea-change. Some of 
the scaffolding has fallen, but the temple walls remain. 

In other wayb too, has the devotion to Mary, founded 
upon dogma, influenced and educated our Catholic lives. 
Devotion to Mary has enabled religion to utilize and 
capitalize and, shall we say, sublimate towards a super¬ 
natural purpose and activity the natural filial-to-mother 
sentiment and the normal reverence for motherhood that 
are common to humankind the world over and that are 
such potent influences upon better and higher living. 
Devotion to her has also enabled religion to capitalize 
and build upon the natural deep-seated respect for pure 
womanhood that is hidden in the heart of even the prof¬ 
ligate and the degenerate. Devotion to her has, more¬ 
over, energized our imitative tendencies. 

Let us analyze another dogma, that of the Incarna¬ 
tion. The feast of the Incarnation, March 25, is passed 
over each year almost unnoticed so far as the great 
mass of Catholics is concerned, and even in the official 
liturgy of the Church it ranks below the feast of Christ¬ 
mas. Yet from the purely dogmatic standpoint, the 
Incarnation is immeasurably more important than the 
Nativity. But the Incarnation has no great human 
appeal, while the Nativity has. The birth of the help¬ 
less divine Infant touches off and activates the powerful 
parental and protective impulses within us, and through 
them draws us closer to Christ. Had the Son of God 
come on earth in full adulthood, the Incarnation would 
still have been a strong religious motive for conduct, a 
motive that would have had a predominantly rational 
pull, a motive that could be formulated about as fol- 


26 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

lows: If God so loves me as to become man for me, 
I should love Him in return. But, coming as Our Savior 
did as a helpless infant, the Incarnation and Birth give 
not only a rational appeal but also an affective, instinc¬ 
tive appeal, a tug at the very heart-strings of humanity. 

Here, then, in the Incarnation and Birth of Christ we 
find dogma providing two psychologically distinguish¬ 
able motives or types of motivation, one in which the 
motive power or driving force is derived from a con¬ 
scious or reflective appeal to our reason or rational will, 
the other in which the driving force is derived from an 
appeal, often not consciously recognized or adverted to 
by us, to the parental, protective, and sympathetic im¬ 
pulses of our instinctive or quasi-instinctive nature. The 
two types of motivation blend and mutually reinforce 
each other, and so tie us to Our Lord with their twined 
strands, and urge us to love both God and man the more 
deeply. Parenthetically, may we not add, that if the 
Divine Educator par excellence, through his dogmatic 
revelation, utilizes and builds upon human instinctive 
driving forces, should we have any hesitation in doing 
so in our halting technic for soul-training and religious 
education? 

The great dogmas of the future life are at the same 
time an appeal to the rational will on the ground of 
prudence and enlightened self-interest and an appeal 
to the instinctive craving for well-being, self-preserva¬ 
tion, and happiness. The dogma of creation is the 
rational basis of the motive of duty, while the related 
dogmas of divine omnipresence and omniscience build 
upon and turn to supernatural purposes the natural, 
and apparently instinctive, human craving for approval 
and shrinking from disapproval. And so one could run 


The Dogmatic Content 


27 


through the whole of Catholic doctrinal teaching and 
multiply illustrations evidencing the fact that dogmas 
furnish a motive power, a driving force, a dynamic 
motivation, which impels us to live up faithfully to our 
Catholic ideal of life. 

Dogmas, then, provide the supernatural motivation 
of conduct. Such motivation, moreover, appears to be 
of at least three types, which we may call for con¬ 
venience, and without pressing the technical psycholog¬ 
ical meaning of the terms, rational, imaginative, and 
instinctive. The rational or reflective motivation of 
self-interest is provided by such dogmas as immortal¬ 
ity, judgment, heaven, and hell; that of duty by the 
dogmas of God and creation especially; that of grati¬ 
tude by such dogmas as those of Providence, the Incar¬ 
nation, and Redemption; that of love particularly by 
the dogmas of the divine Fatherhood, the brotherhood of 
Christ, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the Trin¬ 
ity. Imaginative motivation is exemplified in the ideal 
of Mary, Virgin and Mother. Instinctive motivation 
is illustrated in all of the above examples of dogmas 
that touch off and stimulate and sublimate either in¬ 
stinctive forces and impulses within us or else those 
instinct-habit consolidations and acquired tendencies 
which are genetically related to or which closely 
resemble instinctive forces proper. 

Dogmas mould theoretic ethical codes. A man’s ethical 
standards are almost inevitably influenced by his re¬ 
ligious faith or his philosophy of life. The Protestant 
Reformation, for instance, produced profound changes 
in the thitherto prevailing ethics of the family and prop¬ 
erty. The philosophy of modern socialism or rational¬ 
ism has induced even more radical changes. What one 


28 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

believes will ultimately and in the long run determine 
the concrete principles and tenets of his moral code. 
This is the intellectualistic dynamic nexus between 
dogma and morality. But not less dynamic is the vol¬ 
untaristic or affective and volitional tie between the two. 
An agnostic or atheist must fall back upon the purely 
humanistic motives of conduct. A Catholic has these 
and the supernatural motives to boot. Furthermore, the 
humanistic driving forces are integrated, sublimated, 
reinforced, and strengthened by the Catholic super¬ 
natural motives derived from dogmas. 

We may now sum up in one sentence what has been 
a rather tedious even if unavoidable discussion. As 
moral teaching provides the ideal of conduct, so prayer 
and the sacraments provide the means of grace that help 
us to attain that ideal, while dogmas proper provide the 
motives that urge and impel us to live out the same 
ideal. 

What then is the bearing of this conclusion on the 
dogmatic content of the religion course? If the educa¬ 
tive function of dogmatic truths, understood in their 
broader sense, is to provide the supernatural helps and 
motives of conduct, may we not make the inference that 
the primary aim of dogmatic instruction should be to 
reinforce and enhance the motivating power of beliefs 
and to direct the student in the most fruitful use of the 
supernatural means of help from God. It is in accord¬ 
ance with this general principle that content and method 
of presentation should be determined. The following 
paragraphs contain some scattered suggestions along 
this line. 

1. The major stress should be put upon the great cen¬ 
tral motivating Catholic dogmas, and the minor dog- 


The Dogmatic Content 


29 


mas should be grouped with this end in view. Take, 
for instance, the dogmatic cycle or cluster relating to 
the Redemption. We have therein the simple nuclear 
heart of the dogma, namely, that God so loved us as to 
become man and die for us. The rudest mind realizes 
that greater love hath no man for another than that 
he lay down his life for his friend. Secondly, the nuclear 
truth is explained and enriched in content and vividness 
by the organically related truths concerning original sin 
and the fall, actual sin, the preparation for and birth of 
the Savior, the life and personality of Christ, the cir¬ 
cumstances of His passion and death. With apologies 
to the etymologists, may we call these the peri-nuclear 
dogmas? Thirdly, theology discusses in connection with 
the Incarnation and Redemption certain questions re¬ 
garding the hypostatic union; such, for instance, as 
that of the two wills in Christ,—questions around which 
revolved so many of the Christological heresies of the 
early and later centuries. Such truths we may call pro¬ 
tective or defensive dogmas. 

Thus, just as the biological cell is built up of the 
nucleus, the surrounding cell-substance, and the protec¬ 
tive cell-wall, so many dogmatic cycles have three 
aspects—the nuclear, the sustaining peri-nuclear, and 
the defensive or protective. 

In our dogmatic instruction the greater emphasis 
should be put upon the nuclear truth and its peri-nuclear 
explanation and content. There would be little if any 
educative value in explaining, for instance, many of the 
early heresies regarding the hypostatic union. The con¬ 
ciliar definitions that vanquished most of these early 
heresies were measures of defence which the Church 
took with reluctance and as a last resort to parry attacks 


30 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

that would eventually have struck a deadly blow at the 
very heart of the nuclear dogmas themselves. 

Again, as regards the “peri-nuclear” explanation of 
the dogma, technical dogmatic theology, on which our 
advanced religion textbooks are pretty closely modeled, 
gives little attention, say, to the circumstances of the 
birth and passion in treating of the Incarnation and 
Redemption. Yet these circumstances are of paramount 
motivating value, as we have seen. In general, the 
explanation of the Incarnation and Redemption should 
be modeled much more closely upon the Gospel account 
than, as at present, upon the standard textbooks of 
dogmatic theology. 

Technical theology says little explicitly about the 
Fatherhood of God, a great central motivating dogma. 
The subject does not permit perhaps of technical intel- 
lectualistic treatment. Likewise, most of our advanced 
religion textbooks, while covering in detail the attributes 
of God, scarcely if at all mention His Fatherhood. What 
a contrast to our Lord’s dogmatic pedagogy! 

2. Definitions are not the be-all and end-all of dog¬ 
matic instruction. As we have seen in discussing the 
dogmas regarding the Blessed Virgin, the imaginative 
or impressionistic ideal is active as a motive, even where 
the exact nuances of dogmatic definition cannot be dis¬ 
tinguished with theological precision. This is no brief 
for vagueness or impressionism in teaching, but is rather 
a word of encouragement to those who fret because the 
exact definitions learned today in class will be forgotten 
soon after—if not long before—the boy or girl has grad¬ 
uated from high school or college. 

Scientific theology must exist to analyze, define, sys¬ 
tematize, and correlate dogmatic truths. There must be 


The Dogmatic Content 


31 


definitions somewhere—definitions clearly set forth in 
strict theological terminology, definitions known and 
firmly grasped by technical theologians, definitions em¬ 
bodied and safeguarded in the official literary sources 
of Catholic tradition. But is an absolutely exact the¬ 
ological and technical knowledge and retention in mem¬ 
ory of many such definitions a necessity for the lay 
Catholic man or woman? If so, the early Christians 
must have been seriously handicapped, for we know how 
few definitions beyond those in the Creeds were part 
and parcel of their religious education. If so, many a 
simple soul in our American parishes would have scant 
chances of entering the Kingdom of Heaven. 

It is not always the intellectual precision of thought 
so much as the vivid and vital effective grasp of the 
nuclear and peri-nuclear truths that gives the real dog¬ 
matic motive for conduct. The important aim in our 
Catholic dogmatic teaching is not to turn out amateur 
theologians who can repeat every definition in the ad¬ 
vanced religion textbook; nor to turn out amateur 
apologists who can answer every question non-Catholic 
inquirers can put; but to turn out boys and girls who 
have gotten the habit of making doctrinal truths the 
vital motives for loving God and their neighbor. 

3. In dogmatic instruction, some account should be 
taken of age and sex interests, instincts, and trends of 
the students. In the advanced religion course, for in¬ 
stance, less attention need ordinarily be paid to Baptism 
and Confirmation, as most of the students will already 
have received these sacraments. On the other hand, the 
sacrament of matrimony should be treated with con¬ 
siderable fullness, as should also such kindred subjects 
as choice of mate, courtship, conventions and liberties, 


32 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

impediments, practical procedure for arranging with the 
pastor for a wedding, and, if time permits, something on 
the care and education of children. 

Again, in dealing with boys of early adolescence—of 
the “gang age”—should we stress the passive life and 
virtues of Christ culminating in His passion and death, 
or should we stress the active aggressive life and virtues 
of Christ culminating in the triumph of His Resurrec¬ 
tion? The writer would incline to the latter alternative. 
In teaching girls, perhaps the former is the better 
method. 

4. The treatment of dogmatic truths should emphasize 
the higher motives of conduct. On the one hand, these 
higher motives of duty, gratitude, and love are usually 
attainable in greater or lesser degree by the average lay 
Catholic, at least as combining with or tingeing the lower 
motives of self-interest. On the other hand, there is no 
little danger that our boys and girls, if content with the 
lower motives will fall even below the required level of 
attrition or imperfect love. And if they fall below this 
level, even good faith and ignorance are of no avail. 
In the surveys referred to on a preceding page, 422 col¬ 
lege students were asked to answer the following ques¬ 
tion: “Is the disposition represented in the following 
statement sufficient for Confession: Tf there were no 
heaven and no hell, I wouldn’t bother my head about 
God’s commands, although since heaven and hell exist I 
repent’?” While the question is slightly open to mis¬ 
interpretation, the results of the surprise test were dis¬ 
turbing, not to say alarming. Of the 422 students, 262 
or 62.1 per cent answered correctly; 14 or 3.3 per cent 
were hazy; 146 or 34.6 per cent answered incorrectly. 

5. Into dogmatic instruction should be frequently 


The Dogmatic Content 


33 


and inconspicuously interwoven the moral implications 
and applications of the dogma under consideration. A 
similar point was stressed in the preceding chapter and 
need hardly be gone over again. A paragraph labeled 
“Practice” or “Application” tacked on to the end of the 
dogmatic chapter is too obvious, not to say irritating or 
nugatory. The moral implication or application should 
tie naturally into the body of the chapter and should 
grow organically out of the current treatment of the 
topic. A “Let us resolve” at the end of the lesson or 
chapter makes a somewhat dull appeal to the adolescent 
mind and will. 

In concluding, the following outline is suggested ten¬ 
tatively for the dogmatic section of the advanced re¬ 
ligion course: 

a. Perfect and imperfect love of God. 

b. Immortality of soul. Judgment, heaven, hell, 
purgatory. (Motive of self-interest, hope, prudence.) 

c. God our Creator and Father. Providence. Trin¬ 
ity. Angels. (Chief motives, duty and love.) 

d. Fall, Incarnation, and Redemption. Mary, Virgin 
and Mother. (Chief motive, gratitude.) 

e. Review of dogmas as giving motives of self-inter¬ 
est, duty, gratitude, love, and so forth. 

/. Grace, sanctifying and actual. 

g. Prayer. Communion of Saints. 

h. Sacraments; in general; in particular, especially 
Penance, Communion, and Matrimony. Indulgences. 
Sacramentals. 

i. Mass and liturgy thereof. 

j. Review of means and helps given us through prayer, 
sacraments, and Mass to uplift and strengthen our 
motives for fidelity to love of God and neighbor. 

k. Faith, its intellectual and volitional effects upon 
conduct; its birth, growth, and preservation in the indi¬ 
vidual life. 


THE HISTORICAL CONTENT 


“Life contains no information I” In our grim seeking 
after humor if haply we may find it, we may from time 
to time come across this proud boast blazoned forth on 
the promotion page of the much-read weekly of the 
name. How would it do to carve some similar inscrip¬ 
tion over the portals of our educational institutions? 
Facts, facts, facts; of the formidable collection of them 
which we tuck neatly into the brain-cases of our juvenile 
patients by the familiar trepanning and other neolithic 
processes, how many are worth knowing, and how many 
should instead, after proper embalming and shrouding, 
have been decently buried within the pages of an “Ency¬ 
clopedia of Useless Information”? 

In order to help kindle and keep alight the religious 
fires, the religion course must beg, borrow or steal a 
goodly supply of the products of the mines of Christian 
history. The factual and informational output of these 
mines is well-nigh limitless. The religion course must 
therefore beg, borrow, or steal discreetly. It must select. 
What, then, should it leave, and what should it take? 
The following paragraphs are an attempt at a provisional 
and partial answer to this question. The suggestions 
to be made are based on a decade or more of classroom 
experiment by the writer. 

1. Most textbooks of American history treat mainly 
of the history of American political life and institutions 
rather than of the history of integral American life. 
Man, including the American species, is a political ani¬ 
mal, but is much more besides. History should be inter¬ 
ested in cabbages as well as in kings. Most, if not all, 
34 


The Historical Content 


35 


our commonly used textbooks of Church history treat 
mainly of the career of the Catholic Church as a world¬ 
wide organization rather than of the career of the Cath¬ 
olic Church as the sanctifier of humanity. They are 
concerned mostly with what we might call the external, 
public, dynastic, political, or international life of the 
Church. They scamp most other phases of her life. 

After all, is not the history of Christianity the history 
of the Kingdom of God among men, the narrative of 
the action of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian 
commonwealth and in the lives of the Christian multi¬ 
tudes? The Church is the mystical body of Christ, and 
her history is the record of the energizing of the spirit 
of Christ through His Mystical body. Her history is, 
in other words, the record of the influence and changes 
wrought in the hearts and ways of men by the grace of 
God. Every human relation and every human institu¬ 
tion has felt the shock and impact of this mighty super¬ 
natural force. 

The spirit and works of charity, the family and home, 
chastity, property, free and slave labor, recreation, 
human life and health, civic and international relations, 
religious and political liberty, knowledge and education, 
science and the arts, morality and religion—all these 
primary human pursuits and interests and institutions 
have undergone profound changes because a Babe was 
born to us in Bethlehem. All should receive due atten¬ 
tion in our textbooks of Church history. Christian his¬ 
tory, therefore, that confines its attention to external 
dynastic things comes very near being the play without 
the prince. Do our current textbooks of Church history 
measure up? Some of them, it is true, make a feeble 
concession to the view advocated by devoting a chapter 


36 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

or two to some phases of Christian influence as exercised 
during one period, the later Middle Ages. But why 
should one period be singled out, and why should the 
emphasis even here be confined chiefly to certain limited 
fields such as that of the arts and sciences and education? 

Should not all phases of Catholic life be set forth and 
be set forth for all periods? Moreover, the now neg¬ 
lected phases are often just the ones that are closer to 
the daily life and interests of the boy and girl and that 
can most easily be presented in textbooks and classroom 
instruction in a manner that holds attention. The 
Church history course is, we all recognize, already over¬ 
crowded. The simplest solution is: Make room for a 
more adequate and balanced treatment by crowding out 
some of the less important present content. 

The foregoing view is proposed a bit dogmatically, 
perhaps. The writer desires, however, merely to offer 
it for discussion. It, in addition, seems to concern the 
history course rather than the advanced religion course. 
Its bearing on the latter will be dealt with in the latter 
part of the present chapter. 

2. Church history should bring out in bold relief what 
Christianity has done and is doing for the sons of men. 
It should answer the question: What has Christianity 
contributed to the temporal as well as to the eternal 
welfare of the human race? What, for example, has she 
contributed to the promotion of charity and the works 
of mercy, to the stability and sanctity and happiness 
of the home, to respect for human life, to industrial 
justice and economic freedom, and so forth? 

The modern American mind asks of any institution, 
human or divine, not, What are you? or, What do you 
teach? but, What have you done or left undone? Nor 


The Historical Content 


37 


is the American mind singular in this. The Orient is 
today challenging the Christian missionary from the 
Occident on the same issue. And even on the primitive 
cultural levels, 

By all ye will or whisper, 

By all ye leave or do, 

The silent, sullen peoples 
Shall weigh your God and you. 

“By their fruits you shall know them.” 

What have been the “fruits” of Christianity? What 
has it done and what is it doing for humanity? What 
has it done and what is it doing for you and me, for us 
of today? History that answers these questions in the 
concrete fulfils one of its essential tasks. But it does 
more. It fans and feeds the fires of loyalty in our 
students. For loyalty is the child of gratitude. It arises 
out of the recognition of service rendered. 

3. Contemporary church history should receive a very 
large share, and perhaps the lion’s share, of attention. 
Is it good pedagogy to recount in detail the efforts of 
the medieval Church to lessen warfare among men by 
means of the Peace of God and Truce of God, and at 
the same time to overlook our recent Catholic labors 
for the establishment of international peace and amity? 
Is it not poor policy to laud the medieval guilds to the 
skies while we pass over in silence the great Catholic 
social and industrial movements that are now under way 
on both sides of the Atlantic? 

We are the children of our times. The thirteenth was 
a great century, but we are living in the third decade of 
the twentieth. And we judge institutions less by what 
they have done or left undone in the past than by what 
they are actually doing or leaving undone in the present. 


38 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

Moreover, we of America have not a highly developed 
historical sense and interest. Our students live in the 
present and their interest is keenest in contemporary 
events. By way of illustration, the writer may mention 
that, while questions concerning present-day religious 
liberty in its various aspects are frequently brought up 
by students in his classes, he has never yet received a 
single inquiry or question in reference to the Inquisition. 
That is, in the language of the campus, “ancient history” 
or “old stuff.” Not that American boys and girls have 
no interest at all in the past. Under skilful guidance a 
whole class can often be aroused to a keen interest in 
past history if the teacher is deft at clothing the dead 
bones of the past in fleshly garments and at making the 
men of yore walk the earth again in their habits as they 
lived. But the interest in contemporary events is cer¬ 
tainly more spontaneous and, other things being equal, 
more keen and alert. 

4. The failures of Christianity should be honestly and 
frankly faced. Over against the success of Christianity, 
for instance, in largely stamping out divorce and suicide, 
we have to chalk up its comparative failure to meet the 
challenge of international warfare. 

It is not sufficient to say that the fault lies with 
humanity for not trying the Christian solution. The 
fact of the relative failure stubbornly remains. And it 
is neither honesty nor good policy to evade the fact 
simply because it is unpleasant. We may, however, 
quite legitimately recall and emphasize the general idea 
that Christianity is like an athletic coach and at that 
like a coach who cannot select and choose his raw ma¬ 
terial. Credit and blame are due the coach, not in pro¬ 
portion to the gross tally of victories and defeats for the 


The Historical Content 


39 


season, but in proportion to the net improvement or lack 
of improvement made by him in the raw material placed 
in his hands. 

Moreover, it is good educational policy to drive home 
to our students that, although the Christian generations 
that have gone before us have accomplished much 
towards the establishment of the Kingdom of God on 
earth, much still remains for us of to-day to do and to 
contribute. We of the twentieth century team must play 
our parts to win. 

5. In order to bring out in higher relief the beneficent 
action of Christianity upon mankind, a certain amount 
of illustrative material may well be taken from pre- 
Christian and pagan sources. For instance, the Christian 
concept of the sacredness of human life can be empha¬ 
sized by contrasting it with the ruthlessness towards the 
newly-born often shown in precept and practice by the 
most humane and high-principled pagan moralists of 
Greece and Rome or by some of our own barbarian 
ancestors or by many present-day non-Christian peoples, 
civilized and uncivilized. Catholic condemnation of 
superstitions can well be illustrated by the loose toler¬ 
ance among many non-Christian peoples of superstitions 
that gravely harm human welfare. 

The foregoing paragraphs outline the historical ma¬ 
terial which in the writer’s view should be brought before 
our students in Catholic high schools and colleges. The 
further question now arises: Where and how should 
this historical material be presented? 

Naturally, the Church history course should do its 
part. It is not doing it now. Since it is not doing its 
part, the burden devolves upon the religion course. Even 
were the history course doing its part, the burden should 


40 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

perhaps be shared between the two courses. At any rate 
there should be close correlation. 

We are, however, here concerned with the part to be 
taken under existing conditions by the advanced religion 
course. Two methods of presentation therein are open. 
The writer has used both. 

One method is to combine moral and historical content 
in the same year. For example, when treating of the 
moral obligation of care of the sick, treat also of the 
work done by Christianity for the relief of illness; or 
when treating of the duty of chastity, treat also in con¬ 
nection therewith of the historic labors of the Church 
in the cause of purity. Each sub-heading of the year 
would thus be given both moral and historical exposition. 

The alternative method is to devote a whole year, 
preferably the third or fourth year, of the four-year 
course to the historical treatment of the effects of Chris¬ 
tianity upon humankind. If given in the third or fourth 
year, this historical course can be made to serve inci¬ 
dentally as a review of the moral course previously given 
in the first or second year. The historical treatment 
should follow the same topical order that was followed 
in the moral course. 

As implied throughout this paper, the topical rather 
than the chronological exposition of Christian history 
is suggested, at least for the exposition given in the 
advanced religion course. 

The writer, moreover, feels strongly that it is better 
pedagogy to treat each topic in reverse chronological 
order. Begin with the present and work back. Begin 
also with the near-at-hand and work out. For example, 
if we are dealing with Christian care of the sick, we 
could of course begin with the care of the sick among 


The Historical Content 


41 


the Jews and pagans, and from this starting point gradu¬ 
ally work up through the centuries to the present. But 
is it not better to begin with present-day facts that are 
near to us, and work outwards and backwards? Start 
with the works of mercy for the sick that are being 
carried on to-day in our own parish, community, diocese, 
or country. Call attention first to such work under 
Catholic auspices, then to such work under state and 
non-Catholic auspices. Next, rapidly review the work 
of other countries and of the whole world. Finally, trace 
back our contemporary hospital, nursing, sanitary, and 
research work through the modern, medieval, and Greco- 
Roman periods of Christian history to its source in the 
teaching and example of Christ. Incidentally touch upon 
non-Christian care of the sick by way of contrast. 

One further suggestion may be made in passing. Is 
it not worth while, either at the beginning of or during 
the historical course, to ask the students to write papers 
on some such topics as the following: What has your 
Catholic religion done for you? In what ways has it 
helped you to be better? How has Christianity helped 
to satisfy your needs in life and to protect your rights? 
What are Catholics accomplishing in your parish, com¬ 
munity, diocese, or country? The pedagogical purpose 
and value of such papers is obvious enough. 

The final question that arises is that of sources. The 
sources for information to which we should first apply, 
the easily accessible Church histories, contain the his¬ 
torical data desired in very homeopathic doses. We 
have, however, in English some readily available source 
material in a great many articles in the Catholic Ency¬ 
clopedia. For the convenience of those readers who may 
be interested we offer the following outline of a course 


42 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 


with some of the more important pertinent Catholic 
Encyclopedia articles given in quotes after each topic: 

a. Religion. —“Paganism,” “Religion,” “Monotheism/' 
“Animism/' “Fetishism,” “Totemism,” “Naturism,” 
“Witchcraft.” 

b. Charity. —“Poor,” “Poverty and Pauperism,” 
“Alms and Almsgiving,” “Charity and Charities,” “Hos¬ 
pitals,” “Insane,” “Orphans,” “Education of Blind,” 
“Education of Deaf,” “Leprosy,” “Montes Pietatis.” 

c. Family and home. —“Family,” “Divorce,” “Wom¬ 
an,” “Illegitimacy.” 

d. Property, labor. —“Labor,” “Guilds,” “Slavery,” 
“Popular Action” (in Supplement). 

e. Human life and health. —“Duels,” “Infanticide,” 
“Suicide.” 

/. Civic and international relations. —“Law, Civil, 
Influence of the Church On,” “Papal Arbitration,” 
“Truce of God,” “Prisons,” “Ordeals,” “Democracy.” 

g. Religious liberty. —“Toleration, History of,” “Inqui¬ 
sition.” 

h. Knowledge. —“Libraries,” “Manuscripts,” “Medi¬ 
cine,” “Astronomy,” “Geography,” “Anatomy,” “Phys¬ 
ics,” etc. 

i. Education. —“Education,” “Schools,” “Colleges,” 
“Universities,” “Monasticism.” 

j. Arts. —“Sculpture,” “Painting,” “Ecclesiastical Art,” 
“Gothic,” “Byzantine,” “Miracle Plays,” “Moralities,” 
etc. 

The Reading Lists and Index of the Encyclopedia will 
furnish references to a much larger number of articles 
on the foregoing main subjects. A great deal of usable 
information can be gotten from the many works of Dr. 
James J. Walsh and from the very remarkable little 
work entitled “Key to the World's Progress,” by Charles 
S. Devas. Among elementary works from non-Catholic 
sources may be mentioned Uhlhorn’s “Conflict of Chris- 


The Historical Content 


43 


tianity with Heathenism,” Karl Schmidt’s “Social Re¬ 
sults of Early Christianity,” and Brace’s “Gesta Christi.” 
While all three of these were written several decades ago, 
there is a great amount of factual content in them that 
can be used for illustration. 

For current Catholic work in various fields, the Cath¬ 
olic weekly papers and Catholic periodicals furnish 
abundant source material. Special attention may also 
be called to the recently published directories of Ameri¬ 
can Catholic charities and of American Catholic schools, 
as well as to the official Catholic directory of the United 
States and Canada which is published annually. 

The foregoing list of sources is very rudimentary and 
popular. An adequate bibliography would run into sev¬ 
eral hundred titles. The list given will, however, serve 
as a sufficient introduction for those who may not be 
familiar with the field. Meanwhile may we not hope 
that some public-minded professional Catholic historian 
will soon write us a history of integral Catholic life? 


THE APOLOGETIC CONTENT 


Do you think you could write offhand a 500-word 
essay on the Gnostics or Arians, on the Manichaeans 
or their medieval representatives, the Cathari? How 
bloodless, lifeless, remote and curious appear to us these 
old theological saurians. Yet they were the “modern 
thinkers,” the emancipated progressives of their day. 
Nor were they puny parlor bolshevists. They stalked 
the earth like giants and bestrode the Christian world 
like a Colossus. And they were as nimble-witted and 
resourceful as they were huge. If the rock of Catholic¬ 
ism withstood their repeated attempts at mining, no 
little of the credit was, under divine grace, due to the 
equally resourceful measures of defence devised and 
put into execution by the alert Christian apologists of 
the time. But how strange seems to us of the twentieth 
century much even of the apologetic of those days. 

The fact is, apologetics is a shifting discipline. It is 
the chameleon among the theological sciences, ever 
changing color to match the kaleidoscopic changes on 
the screen of human thought and human error. With 
each new era the Zeitgeist takes on new forms, and 
apologetics adopts new content and new methods ac¬ 
cordingly. During the last four hundred years apolo¬ 
getics has made two major shifts, one on the outbreak 
of Protestantism, and the other at the dawn of modern 
rationalism. Today it is seemingly called upon to make 
a third, as nineteenth century rationalism rapidly 
evolves into what we may call post-rationalism. 

The apologetic literature of the last few generations 
has devoted its attention mainly to the four great ques- 
44 


The Apologetic Content 


45 


tions of the immortality of the soul, the existence of a 
personal God, the deity of Christ, and the divine founda¬ 
tion of the Church. All four questions are still keenly 
discussed, although perhaps there is a considerably 
greater need than existed a half-century ago to take 
account of the good intentions but rickety faith of 
those who pray: “0 God, if there be a God, save my 
soul, if I have a soul!” 

Other important questions are, however, rapidly forg¬ 
ing their way to the front and demanding the attention 
of the apologist, particularly here in our own America. 
These questions raised by the post-rationalists are not 
always the outgrowth of rationalistic doubt alone. 
They seem to take their rise from the pragmatic attitude 
and social sense of twentieth-century America. 

Our typical American philosophic pragmatism at one 
end of the scale and our typical contemporary slang and 
colloquialisms at the other are equally symptomatic. 
That is true which works, the pragmatist tells us. The 
man in the street expresses himself more picturesquely 
perhaps, but in similar vein. “Go get ’em,” “make 
good,” “produce the goods,” “put it across,” “get re¬ 
sults,” “some action”—need we multiply the popular 
phrases one hears daily? The intellectual worker, the 
Pullman smoker philosopher, and the man in the street 
are all judging us by one standard, the pragmatic. They 
are weighing, not our faith or our profession, but our 
works. They are asking us two questions: What is 
the use of all your theological impedimenta which you 
call dogmas? What concrete betterment are you Cath¬ 
olics bringing about in human happiness and human 
life and activities? 

The contemporary social conscience, such as it is, 


46 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

hatches another brood of questions. Is the Christian 
moral code in general and the Catholic moral code in 
particular the last word in morality? Does it make for 
maximum human well-being, for maximum human hap¬ 
piness and welfare? Is, for instance, the Christian 
moral theory of property and labor just? Is Catholic 
teaching on the family, divorce, and birth-control de¬ 
fensible? Is Catholic charity coddling the unfit and 
the wastrel at the expense of the fit and the worth while? 
From the ranks of the eugenists, for example, one hears 
feeble voices faintly suggesting that perhaps our whole 
traditional concept of the sacredness and inviolability 
of human life calls for radical revision—nor are such 
voices heard in non-Catholic circles only! Will these 
voices grow weaker and be hushed, or will they gather 
volume as the century rolls on? There are many sinister 
indications that they will more likely become stronger 
and more articulate. In a word, may it not be that the 
apologetic of the last three-quarters of the twentieth 
century must be largely an apologetic of Catholic moral 
teaching? 

Controversies on concrete dogmas are already reced¬ 
ing into the background. Could you, for instance, get 
many present-day non-Catholics very much excited over 
doctrines of grace or good works? Controversy has for 
many years been converging more and more on the four 
fundamental beliefs concerning the soul, God, Christ, 
and the Church, with a growing emphasis on the first 
two. Today it is seemingly passing over into the field 
of moral concepts and principles. Newspaper publicity 
has thus far centered more on such matters as the living 
wage and birth control—for fairly obvious reasons. 
But the moral code of Christianity is being increasingly 


The Apologetic Content 


47 


challenged all along the line. The apologist must fare 
forth into new fields. 

Our advanced religion students are going out into a 
world of thought and action surcharged with beliefs, 
theories, attitudes, and principles crudely or subtly 
dangerous to their own God-given faith. Our primary 
aim in including apologetic material in the religion 
course is to preserve, buttress, and strengthen the faith 
of our students. A secondary aim is to equip them for 
defending their faith against attacks from all quarters 
and for giving a reasonable account of it to fair-minded 
but puzzled questioners. The apologetic content there¬ 
fore of the advanced religion course should include a 
treatment of the questions most mooted in American 
circles, the great questions we have outlined above. 

These great questions may be summed up as follows: 
What are the reasons for the faith that is in us regard¬ 
ing the Church, Christ, God, and our souls? What has 
the Catholic Church done and what is she doing for 
the promotion of human well-being? What purpose do 
her dogmas serve in the attainment of this end? Does 
the Catholic moral code square with and make for 
human welfare? 

So far as the last three questions are concerned, the 
answers thereto should, it seems to the writer, be given 
currently in those sections of the religion course that 
deal with moral, dogma, and history. While, for in¬ 
stance, explaining the Catholic doctrine of truthfulness, 
explain how truth-telling contributes to human welfare 
by maintaining the mutual confidence necessary for 
social relations. While treating of the Marian dogmas, 
treat of their motivating force in Catholic lives. The 
historical content should lay particular emphasis on what 


48 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

Christianity has done for humankind. Most of the 
foregoing questions relating to the apologetic of moral, 
dogma, and history have been dealt with sufficiently in 
the preceding chapters, to which the reader is referred 
for more details. We may therefore pass on to the con¬ 
sideration of apologetic material relating to the Church, 
Christ, God, and the human soul. 

Our advanced textbooks in religion usually follow the 
logical order in treating these questions. They begin 
with the soul, and then take up successively the existence 
of God, the divinity of Christ, and the divine mission of 
the Church. Is this the best pedagogical order? May 
not the reverse order be preferable for textbook and 
classroom? The following manner of presentation is 
suggested as a basis of discussion. It is the method that 
has been used for some years by the instructors in re¬ 
ligion at the Catholic University, and has, we believe, 
been fairly well tested experimentally. 

Begin with a bird’s-eye view of the Catholic Church 
as a living, energizing, active organism in our contem¬ 
porary civilization. Review rapidly her sheer magni¬ 
tude, as well as her international, inter-racial, and inter¬ 
class texture. Next take up her unique unity and her 
intense religious, moral, educational, charitable, and 
missionary activities. Passing on to the subject of her 
essential spirit and characteristics, treat of her flexibility 
and adaptability under varying conditions and environ¬ 
ments, as contrasted with her unswerving loyalty to 
faith and principle. Her perennial youthfulness and 
vitality, her power of repair and ability to “come back,” 
and her longevity should also be emphasized. In all the 
foregoing, the superhuman and superhistorical elements 
in the life of the Church should be made to stand out in 


The Apologetic Content 


49 


clear relief. To complete the picture of the contem¬ 
porary Catholic organism, something can well be said 
of the miraculous or supernatural in her contemporary 
life and of the remarkable parallel between her life and 
spirit and the life and spirit of Christ. 

After thus presenting the living Church as a going 
organization with unique, transcendent, superhuman, 
supernatural, and Christlike elements in her life, out¬ 
line the traditional early apostolic and biblical proofs 
of the foundation of the Church. The structure and 
functions of the Church may then be taken up. 

An approach to the treatment of the divinity of 
Christ may be made from the historical side. Review 
what the name and person of Christ mean in the affec¬ 
tions and loyalty of one-third of the human race today 
and in the life and ideals of the greater part of modern 
civilization. Outline in a lecture or two the great 
historic changes wrought in humanity by the teaching 
and life of Christ. Give another lecture to the general 
and prophetic preparation for the coming of the Mes¬ 
siah. Such treatment presents the Founder of Chris¬ 
tianity as the central figure and supreme commanding 
personality of human history. Working back from 
this great historic fact, study then the claims of Christ 
as established by His teaching, His character, His 
works, and His miracles. 

Before dealing with the philosophical grounds of belief 
in God as growing out of our concepts of causality and 
of law and order in the universe, it would seem a better 
policy to call attention first to some of the wonders of 
the universe about us, the universe of matter, of life, 
of consciousness, and of intelligence, laying emphasis 
at the same time on the unbridged chasms that yawn 


50 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

at the great dividing lines between nothingness, matter- 
energy, life, consciousness, rational intelligence, and 
free will. 

Finally, so far as the treatment of immortality is 
concerned, start with the study of man himself, with 
the essential unity and equality of civilized and un¬ 
civilized man as contrasted sharply with the lack of 
reason, of language, of religion, and of free will in 
even the most highly developed brute animal. The 
psychological and moral arguments for immortality 
may then be developed. 

The foregoing presentation of the apologetic con¬ 
tent follows the general pedagogical principle that we 
should begin with concrete, near, obvious facts, and 
work from these back to the interpretation of the 
facts. Such a presentation, moreover, enables us to 
break in on what might otherwise be too complicated 
and tedious a presentation of argumentative material. 
The argumentative in such a plan alternates with the 
descriptive. 

The writer feels very strongly that it is not well to 
mass and accumulate apologetic arguments too much. 
Students tire of elaborate proofs and are often handi¬ 
capped by lack of previous training in following long- 
sustained chains of reasoning. 

In addition it seems more advisable not to draw at¬ 
tention too explicitly to controversy. Ghosts may be 
raised as well as lain by such a procedure. Apologetic 
material should, so far as possible, be given currently, 
incidentally, inconspicuously. It should be welded on 
and tied into the rest of the instruction rather than 
isolated. It is not easy, all will admit, to meet this 
need either in a textbook or in class work, but the ex- 


The Apologetic Content 


51 


perienced and tactful teacher can usually handle the 
situation successfully. 

In a recently published course in religion for college 
students a great deal of space is given to the state¬ 
ment of and answer to objections. The questions raised 
are explicitly referred to as “objections” and are treated 
as such in the most formal manner. We are very 
dubious regarding the value of such a method. Is it 
not better to avoid entirely the word “objection” and 
never to advance objections as such, but rather to pre¬ 
sent the constructive facts that give the answer to such 
difficulties? 

To sum up, therefore, it seems that the apologetic con¬ 
tent of the advanced religion course should cover not 
only the traditional apologetic material but also should, 
in view of contemporary American demands, deal with 
the apologetic of dogma, moral, and history. The 
apologetic of dogma, moral, and history can best be 
woven into the current treatment of the subjects as they 
occur in the four-year course. The traditional apologetic 
regarding the human soul, the existence of God, the 
deity of Christ, and the divine foundation of the Church 
is perhaps best given in a separate full-year course. 
The outline of such a full-year course is given on a 
previous page, so it does not seem necessary to present 
a more definite schema of treatment such as has been 
given in the preceding chapters. 


THE ASCETIC CONTENT 


No apology is needed for our use of the word ascetic 
in the above title. Asceticism is often wrongly confused 
with austerity or rigid self-mortification, or even with 
mysticism. We are, however, using the word ascetic in 
its traditional Catholic sense, namely, pertaining to the 
education of the soul in the love of God and neighbor. 
The Greek original from which our word is derived 
meant bodily exercise and especially athletic training. 
Asceticism is, therefore, the system of spiritual athletics 
through which the soul is coached and trained to win the 
game of eternal life. Our ascetic theology is our Cath¬ 
olic science and art of character-building and soul-train¬ 
ing, our technic of moral and religious pedagogy. 

Ascetic theology has almost entirely passed out of 
the curriculum of our seminaries. Although the essential 
task of the priesthood is the building of character and 
the training of souls for the commonwealth of man and 
the commonwealth of God, nevertheless the study of 
the technic of the primary sacerdotal task has been al¬ 
most entirely eliminated from the seminary curriculum 
and left to common sense and the stray bits of ascetic 
lore gathered during retreats and other spiritual exer¬ 
cises. There is no room in the curriculum! Let us 
hope that the day will soon dawn when ascetic theology, 
the art and science of moral and religious education, 
will be taken seriously and admitted into seminary 
circles on equal footing with its sister sciences, dogmatic 
and moral theology. That, however, is a question that 
does not concern us so much here. 

What does concern us is the fact that advanced re- 


52 


The Ascetic Content 


53 


ligious instruction, modeled closely as it is after semi¬ 
nary curricula, has like the seminary curriculum, neg¬ 
lected the field of ascetic teaching. It will perhaps be 
at once said that such ascetic coaching is already part 
of our advanced religion courses as it is of the elemen¬ 
tary and primary courses. In one sense, it is. There is 
no doubt that many practical ascetic suggestions are 
given to our children both in our textbooks and by our 
teachers. But so far at least as textbooks are concerned, 
the suggestions are of a limited type. 

Our textbooks, for instance, frequently recommend 
prayer and the sacraments, call attention to the various 
popular devotions and easily gained indulgences, warn 
against evil companionship, or describe the methods of 
thought-control. These and many other all-important 
and fundamental coaching rules are usually given gen¬ 
erous space. They well deserve all the space we give 
them. But are there not also many other coaching 
rules that we can offer to our advanced religion students 
that will help them make good and win out in the game 
of Catholic living? 

Incidentally, most of our advanced religion students 
will marry soon after leaving college or high school, and 
whatever insight into the educative process and its con¬ 
crete practical principles and methods we can give them 
will be of very real use to them in their future tasks as 
parental educators, as fathers and mothers. In fact, 
may we not look forward to the day when soulcraft 
will be recognized as an independent course or in some 
other adequate manner in the high-school and college 
curriculum. At present we train our students for busi¬ 
ness and trade and the professions and what not, and we 
give them never an hour of preparation for the conse- 


54 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

crated business and trade and profession of guiding and 
coaching the souls that will be entrusted to them as 
future parents by the Heavenly Father of us all. The 
curriculum is too crowded! But that again is another 
question. 

The following paragraphs make no attempt to outline 
systematically the science of Catholic asceticism. They 
merely contain some random suggestions from the field 
that may with profit, the writer believes, be brought 
to the attention of our high-school and college boys and 
girls through textbooks and oral instruction. The sug¬ 
gestions may for convenience be grouped under three 
headings: the technic of habit-formation, the use of 
natural means from supernatural motives, and the use 
of natural motives themselves. 

1. Our ascetic literature teems with valuable sugges¬ 
tions on habit-formation. Some of the more important 
of these have been vividly set forth in English by 
William James, in his brilliant chapter on “Habit.” He 
outlines the key rules of habit-formation as follows: 
“In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of 
an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with 
as strong and decided an initiative as possible.” “Never 
suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely 
rooted in your life.” “Seize the very first possible op¬ 
portunity to act on every resolution you make, and on 
every emotional prompting you may experience in the 
direction of the habits you aspire to gain.” “Keep the 
faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exer¬ 
cise every day.” Readers who may not have read the 
whole passage from James or whose memory is a little 
blurred regarding it may find many worth-while prac¬ 
tical points therein that are well adapted to class-room 
exposition. 


The Ascetic Content 


55 


Some other concrete suggestions along the same line 
may be the following, chosen from those which are no 
doubt familiar to teachers of religion, but which do not 
often receive treatment in religion courses. 

Concentrate effort on dislodging the king log. Each 
of us has some pet fault or dominant moral need. Con¬ 
centrate and select. Neglect, relatively speaking, other 
faults or other needs, and devote the bulk of effort to 
the correction of your pet fault or the acquisition of 
your dominant spiritual need. Don’t dissipate energy 
over too wide a field. First determine what your pet 
fault or supreme need is, and keep on its trail like a 
bloodhound. *One thing at a time. 

Win out on the first test. A resolution once made— 
for example, to say morning prayers regularly or to 
avoid profanity—will perhaps be broken unconsciously 
within twenty-four hours. Don’t trouble about such 
an unreflecting breach. But within a short time will 
come the occasion when you clearly and consciously 
know you are on the point of kicking over the traces 
again. You may for a moment waver. This is the first 
real test of your pledge. This is the crucial test. Make 
good on this first trial of strength, and success will give 
confidence and exhilaration for the next and the next 
until the habit becomes set. 

As a rule, put a time limit on your resolutions. Make 
your resolution for the next week or month. After you 
have carried it through for the week or month, renew it 
for the next. Marathon resolutions easily become 
winded. 

Having once made a resolution, stick to it. Keep 
pegging away, notwithstanding occasional or more than 
occasional backsliding, until you finish the job. If you 


56 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

succeed in acquiring one good habit in a y° u ca 9 

chalk up the period as twelve months \ pent. y 

Other elementary rules of habit-forming \hnic Wi.il 
no doubt occur to the reader. The point \v desire to 
emphasize is that in religious teaching considc able at¬ 
tention ought to be given to such ascetic coaching. Our 
boys and girls should have at their finger tips the basic 
technic of the game. It is probably needless to add that 
such coaching should not be confined to any one section 
of a four-year course. It should be given currently and 
should be interwoven into every section and every sub¬ 
section of the course. Such interweaving cannot be 
done readily and smoothly in a religion textbook. The 
coaching must be primarily done orally by the teacher. 
Of course, such oral instruction may be sterile and un¬ 
productive. What we need most urgently perhaps is the 
development of moral “projects” in connection with our 
advanced religion teaching. A consideration of this 
phase of the problem would, however, involve extensive 
treatment of the question of methods, whereas we are 
in these chapters concerning ourselves only with content. 

2. “Why do we leave everything to the Holy Ghost?” 
said a teaching sister of long experience to the writer 
some time ago. When we recommend our students to 
pray regularly and earnestly or to frequent the sacra¬ 
ments, we are recommending the use of supernatural 
means from supernatural motives. We cannot recom¬ 
mend such means too much, of course. On the other 
hand, should we forget the natural means available? 

When we are in good health, we are more apt to be 
kinder in thought and more charitable in our judgments. 
Habitual charity in thought and word is often closely 
related to habitual bodily well-being. When we are 


The Ascetic Content 


57 


under-non/ :V physically or overtired or exhausted, we 

”e more i led to be testy and irritable. Into our 
minds nr .ood the unpleasantnesses of the past that 
tend to .'up the uncharity ever lurking in the depths 
of our s,uls. Such at least is very common experience. 
Again, many a man, otherwise devoted, hard-working, 
and high-principled, gets the reputation of being crabbed 
and sour and cross-grained and generally cantankerous, 
and richly deserves the reputation, when the real cause 
underlying his crabbedness is avoidable indigestion or 
insomnia. Late hours of retiring are frequently followed 
by a day of ill-temper. Physical exhaustion may 
readily lower normal resistant power to all kinds of 
temptation, or may be, for instance, a very real factor 
contributing to breach of chastity. The list could be 
easily lengthened. 

We are men, not angels, and we are such by divine 
disposition. We have bodies that may carry us gallop¬ 
ing on the road to the Kingdom of God, or may throw 
us into the ditch. Bodily conditions affect spiritual 
welfare for weal or woe in myriad ways. The best 
remedy for a bad temper may be the very simple one 
of eight hours sleep at night, less indigestible fodder, 
or more outdoor exercise. These are natural means to 
supernatural ends, but if the means are carried out 
from a supernatural motive, are not the means them¬ 
selves supernaturalized? Let us emphasize the impor¬ 
tance of the supernatural means like prayer and the 
sacraments, but is it not well to emphasize also the 
natural means for attaining supernatural ends, and in 
particular to emphasize the intimate bearing of physical 
conditions upon spiritual ones? Here too the friends 
of correlation may find a good opportunity for hitch- 


58 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

mg up physical education with religious education, the 
athletics of the body with the athletics of the soul. 

3. In our ascetic coaching, what use shall we make, 
not merely of natural means, but of natural as distinct 
from supernatural motivesf It is generally agreed that 
supernatural virtues should build upon the natural 
virtues. But what is natural virtue? “Natural” can 
hardly refer to the content or object of the virtue in 
question. Is there any virtuous act that does not fall 
within the wide circle of love of God and man? St. 
Thomas in the secunda secundae of his “Summa Theo- 
logica” has given us an elaborate treatise on virtues 
from the supernatural standpoint. It would tax the 
ingenuity of the most ingenious to discover any variety 
of “natural” virtue not included in St. Thomas’ ex¬ 
haustive list of the Christian virtues. He even includes 
the habit of playing or taking recreation among the 
virtues, using for it the Greek name eutrapelia! 

The difference between the natural and supernatural 
virtues is seemingly purely one of motive. If a good 
act is done for a supernatural motive, it pertains to 
the supernatural virtues; if for a natural motive it 
pertains to the natural virtues. In how far may or 
should we use and recommend natural motives in a 
religion course? 

Were we speaking to a group of students on the im¬ 
portance of studying hard, we might make the appeal 
along the following lines: On the work you are doing 
today will depend your financial returns in your life 
work. Hard study is due your folks at home in decency 
and loyalty to them and in gratitude for their sacrifices 
for you. Making most out of school years is a primary 
duty to God Who reasonably expects from every man 


The Ascetic Content 


59 


fidelity to the duties of his actual state in life. Loafing 
is a sin. 

Were we speaking to a group of girls on the question 
of liberties, we might suggest the following motives: 
The girl who easily allows liberties gets herself talked 
about in pretty crude language by the fellow and his 
gang. The average boy will in his heart thank and 
respect the girl who protects him against his own weak¬ 
ness, and it is the girl’s part so to help and protect 
him in his fight for a clean life. High standards are 
expected from the Catholic girl because she is a Cath¬ 
olic: noblesse oblige. Lofty ideals of purity are God’s 
will and are exemplified in the life of His Blessed 
Mother. 

The two foregoing groups of appeals are examples of 
mixed natural and supernatural motives. Many Cath¬ 
olic educators reject and almost contemn natural 
motives on the score of efficacy. Judging the relative 
driving power of motives is, however, a delicate task. 
It is the writer’s experience at least that natural motives 
often have enormous driving power when properly 
proposed, and with some types of personality under 
some circumstances have almost a monopoly of power. 
But waiving the question of relative driving power of 
the natural and supernatural motives, in how far should 
we make use of the former. 

Certainly, in so far as natural motives have a force 
for good, and regardless for the time being of the ques¬ 
tion of supernatural merit, they may materially reduce 
the occasions of sin and the actual number of sins. This 
is quite worth while from the supernatural standpoint. 
We are commanded to avoid such occasions so far as 
possible, and no matter how far we reduce such occa- 


60 The Content of Advanced Religion Course 

sions, we shall still have a superabundance of tempta¬ 
tions on which to exercise and build up spiritual 
muscles. 

Moreover, where the supernatural motives have force, 
but perhaps not quite enough to assure results, is it 
not justifiable and even imperative to reinforce and 
strengthen them by natural appeals? This may not be 
the ultimate ideal, but it may serve as a temporary 
compromise until the supernatural motives get a better 
footing. Half a loaf is better than no bread at all. 

Finally, is it not possible to interfuse the natural and 
supernatural motives, to utilize the natural appeals as 
more or less subordinated to the supernatural? After 
all, even though the supernatural motives may have 
arisen to the place of supremacy in our individual lives 
as a result of long training in the seminary and 
sacerdotal calling or in the novitiate and religious life, 
are not natural motives constantly intermingling with 
and jostling the supernatural motives in our lives? And 
while we may feel that even without the natural 
motives, we should still do our best from religious 
motives, is not this habitual disposition a result of a 
long process of fusion that has gone on silently and 
quietly during many years until the natural motives 
have been more or less absorbed into the supernatural? 

The writer believes firmly for the foregoing reasons 
that we may and should make an appreciably greater 
use of the natural motives than we are doing in our 
religious education. Meanwhile, of course, we must not 
relax one iota of our insistence upon the supernatural 
motives and supernatural means of the religious life. 
If in the present chapter we have given the supernatural 
motives and means relatively brief space, our only 


The Ascetic Content 


61 


reason for doing so has been the well-recognized fact 
that they are already being amply emphasized in our 
religion courses. 

One further point in conclusion. Is there any good 
reason why boys and girls of middle and later adoles¬ 
cence should not have a fairly good grasp of the funda¬ 
mentals of character-training and soul-building? Would 
not such a knowledge help them in their own struggle 
for self-mastery and in their later parental tasks? Such 
an outline course in moral and religious education could 
be a part of some other present or future course in the 
curriculum, perhaps in the social or psychological or 
domestic science group, but inasmuch as such an out¬ 
line course is not at present in the curriculum and does 
not seem to have very hopeful chances of being admitted 
thereto in the immediate future, might it not be pos¬ 
sible to include such an outline in the religion courses? 

This outline should deal with the following subjects: 
Instincts and their modification and expansion; their 
driving force; their potentialities of good and evil; their 
training through inhibition, substitution, and sublima¬ 
tion or alimentation; ideals of conduct, as admitted and 
as personally accepted; function of religion in defining 
and moulding ideals of conduct and in getting them 
admitted by the individual and collective conscience 
as well as in getting them personally accepted or ad¬ 
hered to in actual life; the role of dogmas in this 
educative process; the living ideal or example. The 
above suggestion is made tentatively. The outline need 
not and probably should not take up more than a month, 
that is, about three per cent, of a four years’ course. 











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